Furthermore by Tahereh Mafi

Author:Tahereh Mafi [Mafi, Tahereh]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2016-08-30T04:00:00+00:00

Alice sat there a moment longer, waiting for Oliver to tell her he was joking, when he tugged on her braid and said, “Narrow-mindedness, Alice, will do us no good.”

Alice scowled and slapped his hand away from her hair. “I’m not narrow-minded,” she said. “It’s just difficult for me to believe that we are actually about to meet Time.” She nearly rolled her eyes.

Oliver gasped—and very loudly.

His eyes were wide and horrified, and he dropped his voice to a whisper. “Listen closely,” he said. “Do not let those words leave your lips again. You do not disbelieve in Furthermore. Do it enough times and you’ll end up there.”

“End up where?”

“In Disbelief,” he said, and shuddered. “It’s a horrid town.”

Alice was afraid to ask him why, so she only nodded and said nothing more, keeping her disbelief to herself.

After their lungs had rested awhile, they walked on tired legs into the Still night, where birds were free to sing and crickets were free to dance and frogs would happily croak. They walked through grass that grew up to their knees and ponds that kicked quietly at their shores. Oliver stomped on and smiled at nothing in particular, while Alice distracted herself by peeking into the dark woods that crept just beyond, wondering all the while where everyone had gone, or if anyone had ever been, and what Time would look like, and would Time be nice, and what would happen if Time grew old? What would they do if Time died? And then she had a thought that wasn’t relevant at all, because she was reminded in a quiet moment that she’d been hungry—very hungry—not too long ago. Strange. She didn’t feel it at all anymore.

She mentioned this to Oliver.

“That’s not strange,” he said. “Eventually you’ll stop being hungry ever again.”

“Really?” she asked him. “But why?”

“Because the longer you stay in Furthermore, the farther you get from Ferenwood.”

“I don’t understand,” she said.

Oliver hesitated. Tilted his head.

“Back home in Ferenwood,” he explained, “we have to sleep every night and eat frequently throughout the day, don’t we?”

Alice nodded.

“Right. So, life without those two things,” he said, “would be impossible.”

“But not in Furthermore?”

Oliver shook his head. “In Furthermore you sleep for the dream and eat for the taste.”

Alice hesitated, considering his words.

“So when they eat people,” she said, “they do it only for the taste?”

Oliver was so caught off guard by her question that he laughed and coughed at the same time. “Well—no,” he said. “Not exactly. I have heard that humans have a very particular taste, and that the magical ones give the meals an extra kick”—Alice shuddered at the thought—“but,” Oliver said, holding a finger up in the air, “they eat people because their souls are empty, not their stomachs.

“Here, hunger and exhaustion don’t exist the way they do back home. The infrastructure of Furthermore was built with so much magic as to make the very air we breathe work differently—it makes it so food and sleep are no longer a necessity, but a luxury.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.